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OCHTERLONY, SIR DAVID, Bart. (1758-1825), British
genera], was born at Boston, Mass., U.S.A., on the I2th of February
1758, and went to India as a cadet in 1777. He served under Lord Lake in
the battles of Koil, Aligarh and Delhi, and was appointed resident at
Delhi in 1803. In 1804, having been promoted to the rank of
major-general, he defended the city with a very inadequate force against
an attack by Holkar. On the outbreak of the Nepal War (1814-15) he was
given the command of one of four converging columns, and his services
were rewarded with a baronetcy in 1815. Subsequently he was promoted to
the command of the main force in its advance on Katmandu, and
outmanoeuvring the Gurkhas by a flank march at the Kourea Ghat Pass,
brought the war to a successful conclusion and obtained the signature of
the treaty of Segauli (1816), which dictated the subsequent relations of
the British with Nepal. For this success Ochterlony was created G.C.B.,
the first time that honour had been conferred on an officer of the
Indian army. In the Pindari War (1817-18) he was in command of the
Raj-putana column, made a separate agreement with Amir Khan, detaching
him from the Pindaris, and then, interposing his own force between the
two main divisions of the enemy, brought the war to an end without an
engagement. He was appointed resident in Rajputana in 1818, with which
the residency at Delhi was subsequently combined. When Durjan Sal
revolted in 1825 against Balwant Singh, the infant Raja of Bharatpur,
Ochterlony acting on his own responsibility supported the raja by
proclamation and ordered out a force to support him. Lord Amherst,
however, repudiated these proceedings. Ochterlony, who was bitterly
chagrined by this rebuff, resigned his office, and retired to Delhi. The
feeling that the confidence which his length of service merited had not
been given him by the governor-general is said to have accelerated his
death, which occurred at Meerut on the i5th of July 1825. The Ochterlony
column at Calcutta commemorates his name.
See Major Ross of Bladensburg, The Marquess of Hastings (" Rulers of
India " series) (1893).
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